Senator Ron Boswell said “the Federal Labor members in the Senate by rejecting Tony Abbott’s bill on native title put a higher price on green votes then black votes.”  The Senator said “the Labor Government’s deal to vote against aboriginal land rights was a signal that Labor could no longer claim – that they were the political home of first Australians.”

The Bligh Government has ruined the economic opportunities of indigenous people by ignoring their rights and imposing unilateral development constraints across vast river basins covering 80% of the Cape. 

The successful vote in the Senate of Tony Abbott’s bill gave the first Australians hope.  The bill will be tested in the House of Representatives.  He said “if it got through the Lower House, it would restore the authority of the Native Title Act and economic opportunity to indigenous communities and individuals.”

He cited recent evidence before a Senate inquiry into the bill by Greg McIntyre SC that the Wild Rivers declarations were invalid under the Commonwealth’s NTA because Queensland had ducked the future act provisions.

The future act provisions of the NTA require that the Queensland government notify native title holders of its intentions to compulsorily acquire their rights, triggering the right to negotiate provisions.

Senator Boswell said the bid by State Labor to deny native title was part of a grubby, long term, conspiracy with the environmental group the Wilderness Society to lock up the Cape and deny all development opportunity to indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants alike.

“By far the biggest injustice is the denial of development opportunities to indigenous people, and the blatantly racist interpretation of native title rights as being a right to stand on one leg and contemplate the sunset, as Noel Pearson has put it,” Senator Boswell said.

“It will be to the eternal shame of the Labor Party federally if it votes this bill down in the Lower House and it would aid and abet Anna Bligh’s latest chapter in this long running campaign by Queensland Labor and the Wilderness Society to treat Cape York as their exclusive fiefdom - as land belonging to no-one - but themselves.” 

Tony Abbott’s private member’s bill restoring indigineous rights in Cape York pass the Senate with the support of the Coalition and the two independents.

ENDS